Terrorism

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Here’s Great Trump, and on an issue of vital significance to not only Americans but freedom-loving people around the world: in the first six months of the Trump administration, the amount of territory seized from the terrorist group Islamic State has soared.

As Brett McGurk, the State Department’s senior envoy to the anti-Islamic State coalition, who also served in that position under Barack Obama, stated, roughly one-third of territory reclaimed from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria since 2015 has been taken since Donald Trump assumed the presidency.

McGurk pointed out 8,000 square miles of the 27,000 square miles taken since early 2015 have been reclaimed under Trump; 78% of militant holdings in Iraq and 58% in Syria have been retaken. He added that Islamic State has been driven out of 45 percent of Raqqa since U.S.-backed local forces launched their attack two months ago.

McGurk pointed to Trump’s delegation of decision-making authority to military commanders, as well as a “campaign of annihilation” that has concentrated on surrounding cities held by Islamic state before launching offensives.

Jane’s 360 reported last week that internal divisions inside Islamic sate are becoming a factor, that a suicide attacker killing seven Islamic State militants in Tal Afar, Nineveh province was a “manifestation of internal divisions that have emerged between local and foreign factions of the Islamic State inside the city of Tal Afar, currently besieged by the Hashd al-Shaabi Shia militias. These divisions led to an attempted leadership coup in early July, in which local emir Abu Muslim al-Iraqi and his followers, all Iraqi natives, took advantage of rumours of the death of Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to seize control of the group’s main command centre in the city, in an attack involving three suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.”